Creating connections and considering the adoption of new technologies

Lawrence Tallon reflects on his Sciana experience, the focus of his working group, and diversity in health research

Lawrence Tallon will begin his new role as chief executive officer of the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MRHA) on 1 April. He is currently serving as the deputy chief executive at Guy's and St Thomas' (GSTT) NHS Foundation Trust, where he has had oversight of the Trust's multiple major strategic change programmes. Lawrence has also led the Trust's approach to innovation and improvement, including the creation of the Centre for Innovation, Transformation and Improvement (CITI). 

Prior to joining GSTT, Lawrence worked in a range of strategy and leadership roles in university hospitals in the UK and overseas. He began his career working for the UK Government as a fast-stream civil servant at the Department of Health before working for the Secretary of State for Health and running the headquarters of the NHS Chief Executive.  

In addition to his role at GSTT, Lawrence also sits on the Board of King's Health Partners Ventures and is a member of Sciana's fifth cohort.

This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Sciana Network: What comes to mind when you think about your experience in the Sciana Network?

Lawrence Tallon: I think the Sciana Network experience to me has been very special for a number of reasons. The most important thing is the people who I've had the privilege to connect with here. And that's not just the expert speakers that we've had and the wonderful staff here at Salzburg Global, but particularly the cohort of people who I got to meet over the last two years, got to know, [and] got to learn from. 

The most important thing for me is the people, and I hope those relationships will be long-lasting friendships as well as professional relationships. The second thing is the place. We're sitting here in front of this incredible lake in these mountains, and it just opens your mind when you have that exposure to nature, to something genuinely beautiful in front of you, to open space, to mountains, [and] to forests. 

I think because I live and work in a city, and it's busy, and it's hustle and bustle, and you don't have time genuinely to stop and think and open your mind. But as leaders, our job really is to think, and very often, we don't really think. What I mean by that is we think about a task - this task or that task - but we're not actually standing back and thinking, "What are we trying to achieve overall?"

I often think in the two years I've been on [this] programme, my best quality thinking time with the whole year is when I'm at Sciana. When I'm at work, I'm busy. When I'm on holiday, I don't want to think about work, but when I'm at Sciana, I feel it has that ability to open your mind to think - but about related work things.

SN: Part of the Network's mission is to equip the leaders who are in healthcare to tackle future challenges. Could you provide examples of what you've learned about leadership while participating in this programme?

LT: Perhaps the most important thing for me that's come out of this experience has been learning about the perspectives of other people. In order to lead others, you need to understand others. You need to understand people's motivations [and] people's points of view. 

The beauty of Sciana is we are a completely interdisciplinary group: we have physicians, we have academics, we have engineers, we have policymakers, regulators, [and] entrepreneurs […] We have them from a whole different bunch of countries because it's not just Germany, Switzerland, and the UK, but there are [guest speakers] from all over the world who come to join the programme. It really opens your mind to the perspectives of other professional disciplines and nationalities. 

As a leader, you can start to think about "If I make this decision or that decision, how is that going to impact other people?" It helps you to really think through your role. It's like a 360 view of decisions you might be taking to really consider other people's viewpoints. I think, for me, it makes you a more rounded leader to understand a broader set of perspectives.

SN: Your cohort Sciana Challenge this year is building a connected and sustainable health ecosystem. What does this challenge mean to you, and could you share more details about what your working group has been investigating?

LT: The challenges we face as health system leaders, although they may have slightly different characteristics in our different countries and our different jobs, to a great extent they are common challenges. They are challenges about the growth of demand for health services from ageing [and] multimorbidity; they are challenges about the constraints of supply in terms of money [and] in terms of people; they are challenges about intergenerational fairness; they're challenges about the adoption of technology. 

Sciana has given us a place to come and think, to come and collaborate, come and share ideas, share challenges, share opportunities, [and] share solutions to those common problems. In particular, the working group that I've been in has been focussed very much on the adoption of new technologies in health care. 

If we look at the explosion of new technologies, whether that be digital technologies and AI or whether that be biotechnologies, for example, in genomic medicine and gene editing, these technologies are coming at us incredibly quickly. But health systems have been poor at adapting and making those technologies available to their citizens, [and] their populations safely, but also quickly. 

Our focus has been, how can we support and encourage health system leaders who are more able to adopt technologically driven innovation for the benefit of their citizens, their patients, and their health systems? Those problems, those issues, [and] those challenges are very much common across Europe and, indeed, other countries. 

SN: You hosted an event featuring fellow Sciana Fellow Richard Stubbs as a keynote speaker. This event was supposedly born at a Sciana Network meeting. Can you tell us more about the event, the reasons for hosting it, and how it went?

LT: One of the best things about Sciana is the non-programmed activities. So, we have these terrific activities in the programme, but we also have loads of serendipitous things that happen outside when we're just talking with each other. 

Richard Stubbs is a colleague of mine in the same cohort […] we didn't know each other before we joined Sciana, [and] we got to know each other here. We were talking in the library - the fantastic library here at the Schloss - about our common commitment and passion for innovation, but also diversity and equity in health. And what we know, and what we've observed, is that innovation can often create problems for equity […]

We have an opportunity to de-bias or remove bias from medical devices like pulse oximeters or AI algorithms. But we can only do that if we plan to do that and we're careful about how we deliver research [and] how we deliver innovation. So we were talking about this in the library here at the Schloss, and we said, "Why don't we put on an event because we have this common interest?"

We had the idea here, we exchanged emails, and we had a couple of chats outside of Sciana. Because I luckily have a big group of hospitals in London with a great big hall, we managed to fill that hall with people who had a shared passion for this subject […] Richard was our keynote speaker, and we had some other great speakers there, [too], and we put on an event to help drive forward diversity in research and innovation, and that would not have happened if it hadn't been for Sciana […]

I would encourage people to think when they are part of Sciana that it is not just the time you're here in Salzburg; it's the networks you create. It's the shared commitments, the shared missions you create here and how you can take that into your leadership outside of the Schloss. 

SN: Why do you think diversity in health research and health tech is so important?

LT: In terms of global demography, the future of the world is increasingly African and Asian, and yet if we look at biomedical research and healthcare innovation, so much of it has come from, up to this point, Europe and North America. A lot of the technologies that we produce won't necessarily be replicable for the world's population unless we consciously develop them [and] unless we have research cohorts that are truly representative of the world's population. 

My passion [and] my commitment [are] that we don't replicate the mistakes that we made in the past. So we build AI, we build genomic medicine, [and] we build medical devices to be applicable readily across the world for where the people of the world will increasingly live in the future, rather than what is a diminishing proportion of the global population in America and Europe.

SN: Your final residential meeting coincided with European Mental Health Week. What's one thing you do to protect and support your mental health?

LT: That's a good question. I mean… I guess life is busy, work is busy, and we have to take time to look after ourselves [and] look after the people around us. I guess one of the things that I try to do personally is I try to decompress from work by reading […]

I read a bit of a book before I go to bed, and I'll often try and read things that are not necessarily directly related to work. So, I studied history at university, I like to read history. I like to read about politics. I like to read about a kind of broad range of things […]

It's having that ability just to switch your brain off from the stresses of work and think about things that take you to a different place.